The Mega Pixel | Image Resolution Defined

04 Dec The Mega Pixel | Image Resolution Defined

The Mega Pixel | Image Resolution Defined

What Is a Pixel

You might wonder what this is all about, lots of ideas are crossing your mind when hear the word pixel, three words come to into mind the Google Pixel Mobile phone, a Facebook Pixel, and lastly, we focus on the Image Pixel – Mega Pixel

A pixel is smallest visual unit in an electronic display or visual data file; a single “dot”. Most modern electronic displays are composed of a grid of pixels. Each pixel can be turned on or off, or – in the case of full-color displays – dimmed or made a specific color. In this way, pixels are individually controlled to cause the whole display to show information and graphics.

An important measure of an electronic display the number of pixels. More pixels allow the display to show more detail and more information. This is called “resolution”, and is typically stated in terms of vertical and horizontal pixels (such as 240 x 320).

Megapixel Explained A megapixel is 1 million pixels. Pixels are small squares that are put together like pieces of a puzzle or mosaic to create your photographs. The resolution of your image will be determined in large part by how many of these tiny squares are packed together in a small space. An 8 megapixel camera (8MP) would have roughly eight million tiny squares of information per inch while a camera phone at 1.5 megapixels (1.5MP) would only have one and a half millions squares of information in an inch.

Benefits For Photos and Computer Images Simply put, the more information the better. The more information squeezed into an area, the better our eyes blend the edges together to create a complete image. If too little information is available the eye will notice the jagged edges of the pixels where they meet, just as you see the individual squares of mosaic tile designs. The accepted “standard” for printing images is currently 300dpi (dots per inch). While dots per inch aren’t technically the same as pixels per inch the difference won’t affect you in your day to day photo taking/printing.

The Benefits of A High Number Of Pixels

However, more megapixels do matter when viewed on a phone, when zooming in or cropping a photo. For example, some phones with 20 or more megapixels let users “zoom in” without losing quality, without an optical zoom lens. They do this by simply cropping a high-quality 8-megapixel photo from the center of the 41-megapixel image captured by the camera (for example.)

Photos with more megapixels are larger in file size, and therefore can take longer – and cost more – to send over the network at full size. Most cameras and camera phones have an option to take photos at lower resolution (smaller), if desired. This is useful for taking photos that will only be sent via MMS and not transferred to a PC or printed.

Image Resolution & Print Quality

Resolution refers to the number of pixels on display or in a camera sensor.Higher resolution means more pixels, which provides the ability to capture or display more visual information (more detail and clarity.)For example, a display with 720 x 1280 pixels is much higher resolution than a display with 480 x 800 pixels.Similarly, a camera with 12 megapixel (12 million pixel) resolution can capture more detail than a camera with 3 megapixel resolution.

Resolution does NOT determine physical size. For example, one 480 x 800 display might measure 3.0 inches diagonally, while another 480 x 800 display might measure 4.5 inches. Similarly, a 3 megapixel photo could be printed out at 4 x 6 inches just as easily as 8 x 10 inches. A larger physical size photo can”t look as crisp as the physically smaller one. The crispness of a display or photo is more closely determined by a measurement called DPI or PPI dots per inch or pixels per inch